Ann Marie McQueen, Founder of HotFlash Inc., joined Maria Botros on this week’s Tell Me Why episode to discuss the distinction between perimenopause and menopause, symptoms women experience, and misconceptions surrounding these pivotal phases in a woman’s life.
Ann Marie: The beginning of menopause is actually sparked by a drop in progesterone.
Progesterone really governs the stress response, so when the progesterone recedes, you can be left feeling very uncomfortable, says Ann Marie
Ann Marie: We know from research that women of color, socioeconomic challenges, and adverse childhood experiences can worsen the perimenopause phase
If you’re in a state where your estrogen is high but your progesterone is low, that’s where a lot of anger and lack of sleep can come from, says Ann Marie
See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
Ann Marie: The beginning of menopause is actually sparked by a drop in progesterone.
Progesterone really governs the stress response, so when the progesterone recedes, you can be left feeling very uncomfortable, says Ann Marie
Ann Marie: We know from research that women of color, socioeconomic challenges, and adverse childhood experiences can worsen the perimenopause phase
If you’re in a state where your estrogen is high but your progesterone is low, that’s where a lot of anger and lack of sleep can come from, says Ann Marie
See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00So basically, everyone thinks that, and the way they talk about menopause is your estrogen just drops and then you're in menopause, and it's all because of dropping estrogen.
00:11But the hormone sort of orchestras seems to be really misunderstood. Our most abundant hormone is testosterone, actually. It's not a male hormone.
00:19And that's been dropping since your age, or even 30, slowly over time. And there are people having problems with low testosterone, men and women.
00:27And for reasons we don't really understand, but they probably have to do with our sort of like environmental factors that are different.
00:32Right.
00:45Welcome back. It's a brand new episode of Tell Me Why. With me in the studio is Anne-Marie McQueen, the founder of Hot Flash Inc. Anne-Marie, how are you?
00:53I'm good. How are you, Marie?
00:54Good. Love your smile. Like you're just, you're putting me, I feel at ease, honestly. You're just, you're making it so much easier to talk about today's topic.
01:03And I think it's one that a lot of women think about and a lot of women worry about. And I think it's because that they've been misinformed their whole lives.
01:13And like I think there are a lot of misconceptions around the topic, which is perimenopause and menopause.
01:19And I think it's just, it's something that, that women feel like, oh my gosh, that's the end of the world when, when they go through it.
01:25So I want you to, I mean, we're going to get into everything today. But before we get into it, I just want to know like about you, like your, your professional career, how you got into this and why did you decide to start Hot Flash Inc?
01:41Okay. So I'm a journalist and I've been working for almost 30 years, which is unbelievable to think about when you just told me your age. I've been around and I spent half my career in Canada and half my career here in the Middle East.
01:56It's getting a little bit more than half now. And when I was 27, my mom died of pancreatic cancer and my mom was always very unwell.
02:04And so even though I wanted to be an investigative journalist and a political journalist and do all the hard stuff, I found myself coming back to health and wellness long before it was trendy or, or done in a sort of a grand way.
02:17It was much more about like health reporting and healthcare reporting. So looking back, I know that I was sort of on the path to like, why was my mom unwell? Why did she have such a hard time? And why did she die when she was 53?
02:29And so I've always come back to that and alternative ways of looking at things. And then I became a, you know, I came over here, I was on the launch team for the national newspaper. And while I was there, I had such tremendous career opportunities, became the arts and life editor and the features editor and was able to really dive into wellness.
02:48And then at the same time, I'm in my 40s, and I'm having a really terrible time. And I don't know why I don't, I literally don't know why I'm having, you know, it started with panic attacks, it started with severely interrupted sleep nightmares, I developed a fear of flying out of nowhere.
03:07And then lots of weird physical symptoms. I was always having shivers and tingles and pains in my chest and pain in my body, a lot of muscular pain, this didn't happen all at once. But they were like roving random symptoms. And I would have these weird feelings in my head, and I would be smelling burning. And I would just think I was dying.
03:30Like a lot of the time, I thought something terribly, terribly, terribly wrong was wrong with me. And I ended up getting going and getting a therapist in my early 40s and worked through a lot of stuff because I did bring a lot of stuff into perimenopause, but I had no idea about perimenopause. I saw probably 10 to 12 doctors here over the course of those years, say between 41 ish and 47. And no one mentioned my age, no one mentioned hormones, no one that I can remember mentioned any of that stuff.
03:59And of course, I was in denial, because to me, menopause was something that happened when you were like 65. Even though I'm a health reporter, and I know that's not true. You never think you're as old as you are. And so it was only when I like my monthly cycle started to obviously change at 47. And I started to look into it, that I started to look into this whole thing. And because I'm a content person, I just started seeing that there wasn't any good content about this.
04:26It was either fear mongering, or it was designed to make someone money or like, you know, freelancer.com type stuff. And I just thought I could do this really well because of where I'm at and find out about myself. So that's what I did. And once I realized and accepted that I was in perimenopause and learned more and more about it, I was just putting together the pieces I was as I was developing the platform for what had happened to me.
04:50And even it's only been in the more recent years, I've been doing this for about four years that I've realized that women do develop panic attacks, they do get nightmares, they develop a fear of flying or driving over bridges. These things come out of seem to come out of nowhere, but there's actually physical reasons for them. And once you know what's going on with you, it's not so scary. And there's a cohort of women who've done the same thing as me in different ways. And we've all kind of joined together around the world. So it's a really cool evolution in my career.
05:19I couldn't have seen that coming.
05:50Because, again, I think I heard the term perimenopause four months ago. I never knew what it was. I thought it was just menopause. I never knew that there was something called perimenopause.
06:01No one did. No one knew about that until recently.
06:04Yeah. And I think it was only when I started researching it, you know, WebMD, that I found out more about it. And I think that was my next question is, what's the difference between perimenopause and menopause? And I think it's good to define that for our audience who might not know what the difference in symptoms and what the phases are of it.
06:27OK. So menopause is kind of a moment in time, although there's some debate about the terms going on. And they're different in parts of the world. But technically, when you've stopped your monthly cycle, you stopped having your period for 12 months. You've had 365 days with no periods. Then you've gone through menopause.
06:47And a lot of people refer to you as postmenopausal then. But some of the issues that you might have had don't immediately go away. So there's a group of people who would like the entire rest of your life to be called, I'm a menopausal woman. You know, I'm a woman without my monthly cycle and I'm not fertile.
07:03The year that you spend doing that is called the transmenopausal year. Not very widely known either that term, but I really like it. It's usually used in terms of bone health. But I really like that term because that's a pretty hectic, crazy year. Like, I felt like I was in a storm that year. I just recently went through it. And then all of the years before that. And there's debate about this, too. Is it seven? Is it 10? Is it 12? I'm hearing 15. That's perimenopause.
07:28That's because obviously your body can't just stop doing what it's doing all at once. And the term perimenopause has always been around, but it wasn't popularized. And even I wrote about this in my 30s menopause and spoke to a couple of experts and no one mentioned that term. So it's really become popularized lately to name this time. And do you want me to talk about what's happening a little bit?
07:51Yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, the symptoms, what women go through, how it affects their mental health. I think these are all questions that women ask.
08:21And it's all because of dropping estrogen. But the hormone sort of orchestras seems to be really misunderstood. Our most abundant hormone is testosterone, actually. It's not a male hormone. And that's been dropping since your age or even 30.
08:34Yeah.
08:36And there are people having problems with low testosterone, men and women. And for reasons we don't really understand, but they probably have to do with our sort of like environmental factors that are different.
08:44Right.
08:45Then the beginning of perimenopause is actually sparked by a drop in progesterone. And during this time, when your progesterone is dropping, the progesterone really governs the hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal access, and it really governs the stress response.
09:05And so when this progesterone recedes, you can be left feeling very, very uncomfortable. And what the way I described the beginning for me is just exactly how it can feel. You can have a lot of sleep problems and you can have a lot of anxiety and your mood can really be screwed up.
09:23And yes, you can have some of the more typical symptoms like hot flashes. And when I told you about my experience, that was spread over six or seven years. The earliest part were these sort of psychological problems that I dealt with and sleep interruptions. And it's important to remember that it's not like this for everyone.
09:40I mean, they've studied the Hazda woman in Africa. It's a tribe. They don't have barely any. They don't even have a word for menopause. And they don't really record much, if any, symptoms in the way of symptoms. And there are parts of the world where women don't seem to have as much of a problem with perimenopause. We don't exactly know. Perhaps it has something to do with their diet.
10:02But that can also be kind of a myth. I've always heard that people in Japan don't really have perimenopause and menopause symptoms. But actually, when I talk to people from Japan, they do so. And, you know, so some women have nothing and some women have it really hard. And what we're starting to realize is what you bring into this time of your life is can kind of impact how difficult it is.
10:24And we know from the research that women of color, socioeconomic challenges, adverse childhood experiences, which is another word for trauma, autoimmune disorders and other illnesses, arthritis, these things can really worsen the perimenopause experience.
10:44I had gut issues my whole life, probably around 30 when I started being a journalist. Tremendously stressful job, had just lost my mom. And that's when I had IBS and no one ever really knew about it. We know a lot more about gut health, right? The microbiome wasn't even a word.
11:00It's become a buzzword. Gut health, microbiome, that kind of thing.
11:04But Hippocrates, that old guy, he said, you know, all disease begins in the gut. The gut is the center of things. And so.
11:10It's your second brain.
11:11Yeah, it is. We know this interplay back and forth. I now look back and think, was I anxious and depressed when I was 32 or 35?
11:18Or was it just my gut?
11:19Yeah, and how I didn't know how to treat it. So I brought those things, some of those things, the gut health, some adverse. We all have adverse childhood experiences.
11:27And even if you're in your family thinking, well, no one else seems to be upset by any of the things that happened in our house, right? That's really common. I read the other day that, you know, you didn't have the same childhood as your brother or sister.
11:38It was a different time.
11:40So that can really inform and other things that can really, really sort of like complicate a perimenopausal transition are if you were chronically under eating, chronic stress.
11:53You know how we go over exercising. We we working way too hard over functioning.
12:00We all do these things right as women. And then just some of, you know, just some of the things that we face as women, just some of the things that we have faced with men, some of the experiences we faced at work, the extra sort of burden that is involved with being a woman.
12:14And I'm not someone who goes on and on about this, but it is a reality, right?
12:17Oh, of course.
12:18So these things can all make that early transition hard. And what's happening during this time is your estrogen is dropping slowly over time, but many times it's rising and falling and rising and falling.
12:29So while the mainstream menopause conversation talks a lot about adding estrogen and the more forward thinking people I've interviewed, I have over 100 episodes of my podcast.
12:40And I have sort of discovered over time that the more forward thinking people are talking about adding progesterone in the beginning stages, making that like your entry if you decide to go to hormone therapy or just trying to replace this kind of like protection that you've lost in other ways.
12:59Perhaps it's adding minerals and perhaps it's adding magnesium, which we're all deficient in or other supplements.
13:06And maybe this is a time for therapy. It's a different way of looking at it, but the mainstream conversation is quite estrogen, estrogen, estrogen.
13:14And if you're in a state where your estrogen is high and your progesterone is low, that can be a very uncomfortable place to be.
13:20That's where a lot of like the anger can come from. You don't have the progesterone to offset the estrogen.
13:25And just like sleep problems can come and a lot of other problems like sore breasts and things like that.
13:32So the hard thing is that this kind of shifts through the transition and you may not have even had any change in your monthly cycle at all.
13:41And I didn't. But then it might change a little bit within the monthly cycle in sort of as you move into the phases.
13:47And then as you get deeper into the transition, you might start to skip a period.
13:52You might start to skip a couple of periods and then, you know, you're moving later and later.
13:57And you can kind of track, but not for everyone, because some women just stop.
14:02So this is the thing, like for any time we try to create parameters, then there'll be outliers who do it differently.
14:09Oh, of course. And I think my uncle is a gynecologist.
14:12And he was like, it's so difficult to understand the female body because like there's so many there's so many mysteries.
14:19There are so many things that we still do not know. There isn't a one rule that fits all.
14:24It doesn't work that way. Some women, as you mentioned, some women experience symptoms.
14:29Other women in different parts of the world don't experience symptoms.
14:32And it's fascinating hearing you talk about it, because I just there's so many questions that come to mind.
14:40And there's so many thoughts that come to mind as well, because as women, there are so many expectations of us.
14:47Like our family members, our partners, our friends have so many.
14:54I want to say, I mean, expectations. I mean, there's so much that's expected from us.
14:58And when you're going through that, you don't necessarily get the support that you need.
15:03No. And then let's not discount our own brutal expectations of ourselves.
15:07We have to do everything all the time, functioning on all levels, high all the time.
15:12Exactly. And, you know, we have to do and be everything.
15:16And a lot of some other things just that can affect this perimenopause transition is like, you know, a lot of women are doing two jobs.
15:23They're they're they're raising their children and they're also working.
15:27Yes. And men have some men are great and they pitch in 100 percent.
15:31But a lot, as I know from my friend cohort, don't.
15:35And so that is like you you're having two jobs and the inner resentment and the inner anger that you're not really allowed to feel because we're not allowed to be angry.
15:43Oh, of course. And then also, if you have problems in childbirth, that can be another issue.
15:48If you know if you have some women develop gestational diabetes, that can be a problem.
15:54And then increasingly, we have women who are going through early menopause.
15:57And that's another that's another thing.
16:01No, no, no. Please go ahead. Yeah.
16:03Well, early menopause and surgical menopause are a different beast altogether.
16:07So there's a lot of discussion over whether you need to replace the hormones you're losing through menopause.
16:13And there's a lot of people telling you that that is what you need.
16:16You know, you hit 50 and you lose all your menopause and you have all your hormones and you have to replace them.
16:21A lot of people believe this. I wouldn't say it's reflected in the literature.
16:25In most cases, this is a natural transition.
16:28Our bodies were designed to do it. We've gone through it for eons.
16:32I mean, there's references to menopause all the way back to the Bible and religious texts and Aristotle.
16:40So whether you choose to do hormones or not for it's emerging kind of three reasons to help your symptoms to prevent disease,
16:49which is not doesn't bear out in the research or maybe to optimize because there's biohackers who are talking about hormones.
16:56But the group of early menopause and people who go through surgical menopause,
17:00because there's a lot of women with endometriosis who get hysterectomies.
17:03If you can, you can lose your hormones at 50 ish and be fine, like really live a long life.
17:11We were intended to do this. But what really you can't do is lose your hormones at 35 or 40.
17:17The outcomes for those people are not good. And the health care system has not really caught up.
17:22So there's women going in and having hysterectomies and leaving and literally the next day,
17:26like falling apart because they had all the hormones and they're gone.
17:29And what I don't understand about surgical menopause and early menopause is surgical.
17:35But definitely you go in there with estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. Fine.
17:39You leave without them. And they'll just you know, if you've had a hysterectomy, you you don't need to take progesterone.
17:48So when they give you hormone therapy, when you go through menopause, you take estrogen,
17:52you might take estrogen and you take progesterone either as an early way to deal with early menopause symptoms.
18:00But you if you take estrogen, you need to take progesterone because estrogen makes things grow.
18:04So it will make the lining of your uterus grow and that can lead to endometrial cancer.
18:08So that's one reason you have to take those two hormones.
18:12But women are going and having surgical menopause and leaving.
18:15Because they don't have a womb, they just give them estrogen.
18:19And I just think it's so weird because you had progesterone right up until you had the surgery and you don't need it.
18:23So I don't know if I'm kind of painting a picture for you of how messed up this is.
18:27You are. You are.
18:28And I don't know. I don't want to confuse everyone, but that's where we're at right now.
18:32And as you said, it balances it out. The progesterone balances out the estrogen, like the spike in estrogen.
18:38You need both. But why do you think more and more women are experiencing perimenopause at an early age?
18:44Do you feel like it's a mix of like, is it stress-induced or is it the environmental factors?
18:50Is it our nutrition? Why do you think that's the case?
18:53I don't really know enough to speak to that. But look at all the other problems that we're having.
18:57I don't think you would have to look far to see that we –
19:03like the same reason men are having a really hard time in losing their testosterone.
19:06Those reasons are all lying in this sort of soup where we can't really put our fingers on it.
19:10We use so many products with so many chemicals.
19:13We've eaten so many different kinds of foods with goodness knows what in them.
19:17The way we've lived, the air quality is such a huge proponent.
19:22There was just a study released earlier this year that talked about air quality directly related to menopause symptoms.
19:28So I just think, you know, to piece that all out is crazy.
19:33You have your own personal genetics and biology.
19:38It is sort of related to when your mom goes through it, although it doesn't always have to be.
19:42So I can't say definitively.
19:44But I just think it's probably the many reasons we're having so many problems with our guts, with our – you know.
19:52But I can't really say.
19:54Yeah. I mean, I get that though.
19:55I mean, because it could be a mix of all these things and it's not just one reason.
19:59There are some reasons.
20:01But the names they call it, premature ovarian insufficiency is the name they give it to, right?
20:08But what is that?
20:09That's sort of the same as irritable bowel syndrome.
20:11They're not real diagnosis.
20:13They're not real root causes.
20:14They're just the name that the medical industry gives to the situation.
20:18So we're so understudied as women that I don't know when we'll get around to studying this in real detail.
20:25And even to get like hard numbers of how many – the age.
20:29The age – another thing is the age of menopause is lower in countries that have a harder time, I guess.
20:35I'm speaking very generally.
20:36But, you know, the age of women in Jordan go through menopause at a younger age.
20:40Women in India go through menopause at a younger age.
20:42So sort of the life stress that you're experiencing and all that goes with it I think does have an impact.
20:48But, you know, there's a woman who's running for vice president of the United States right now with an independent candidate.
20:54Nicole Shanahan.
20:55She used to be married to the head of Google.
20:58She went through menopause at 29.
21:00And, I mean, this is a woman with all the resources in the world, right?
21:03So I don't know what exactly her reasons were.
21:07But there's all sorts.
21:09It could be a mix of them, yeah.
21:10It's so funny when you talk about like all these diagnoses that you get from like doctors.
21:14And it's like what does that even mean?
21:15Like what am I supposed to do with that piece of information?
21:17Like give me more.
21:18I need more knowledge.
21:20And we had Sophie Smith on the show.
21:22Oh, I love her.
21:23She's amazing.
21:24The conversation was just flying.
21:26She's so smart.
21:27And she has so much to offer.
21:29Like she was talking about how, you know, insurance policies don't do justice to women.
21:33And, I mean, globally it has nothing to do with like a region or like a country specifically.
21:38It's everywhere.
21:39And that there wasn't enough research on women until like the mid-1900s.
21:44And like it was always the males that were focused on.
21:46And obviously that's the reason why we don't have any clear answers or like clear research.
21:51They just took us out of clinical studies because we have a monthly fluctuation on our hormones.
21:55Exactly.
21:56That's insane.
21:57Like when I learned science, when I learned the basics of science in high school, that was a basic thing.
22:02You have to compare.
22:03You can't just remove a confounding factor because you don't like it.
22:08Actually, science does that all the time.
22:09And that's precisely why you should include them because they have a monthly, you know, fluctuation.
22:15Oh, but that's too hard.
22:16Oh, my goodness.
22:17Yeah, they were taking the easy way out.
22:21Yeah.
22:22Yeah.
22:23Yeah.
22:24Yeah.
22:25Yeah.
22:26Yeah.
22:27Yeah.
22:28Yeah.
22:29Yeah.
22:30Yeah.
22:31Yeah.
22:32Yeah.
22:33Yeah.
22:34Yeah.
22:35Yeah.
22:36Yeah.
22:37Yeah.
22:38Yeah.
22:39Yeah.
22:40Yeah.
22:41Yeah.
22:42Yeah.
22:43Yeah.
22:44Yeah.
22:45Yeah.
22:46Yeah.
22:47Yeah.
22:48Yeah.
22:49Yeah.